Rosa sifted flour into the bowl, watching it fall like fine snowflakes onto the creamy yellow mixture beneath before folding them gently together. Baking a cake was her favourite kind of magic: the alchemy of ingredients, the soothing processes of measuring and mixing, the scent of something delicious in the oven. She added a tablespoonful of milk and then a teaspoonful of vanilla extract, and after one final stir, decanted the contents of the bowl into two greased tins and slid them into the oven. Setting the timer on her phone, she saw that Jo’s daughter Bea would be home in less than an hour. Rosa might not have the first clue about teenage girls and how to look after them, but she did know at least that a slice of home-made cake could prove a great comfort in times of adversity.
Cook it better; she should really get it printed on a T-shirt. When her first teenage boyfriend Jon (floppy hair, bad poetry) dumped her, she had baked for two weeks solid: brownies, pies, bread, sponge cake, like her life depended on it. After her grandma died, she’d gone home to her mum’s for a week and made lasagne and casseroles, hearty comforting family food to help them through their sadness. Following the split with boyfriend number two, Peter the cheater, she’d thrown herself into more cheffy things, home-made pasta and flaky pastry. Croissants, even. And now look at her – working with food full-time after the most devastating heartbreak of all. It helped, though. It made her feel better. And nobody could fail to be cheered by sponge and buttercream, right?
As she washed up, Rosa heard the quick light footsteps above her head that meant someone was home up there. She hadn’t yet met the new people living in the flat upstairs but had heard them: furniture being moved around, a piping treble voice singing along to the radio, an explosive argument one day, and some very loud sex that same evening. Today the female voice was singing ‘I Feel Pretty’ loudly and quite badly over the roaring of the Hoover. She smiled briefly, tightly, remembering how Max’s neighbour in Islington had been a semi-professional soprano; how they’d been able to hear her practising her arias on summer evenings when the windows were open. Was he still keeping up pretences and living there? she wondered for the hundredth time, picturing his long lean body as he . . .
The wet ceramic mixing bowl slipped in her fingers suddenly, clattering against the draining board. No, she told herself. Forget him.
Once the sponge cakes had been baked and were cooling on a tray, Rosa still had twenty minutes left before Bea was due home, and found herself drawn towards her laptop, as if it carried a powerful magnet she was unable to resist. Just a quick look, she told herself. Five minutes. Her guilty little secret.
The Facebook page came up as her most-visited site now, more so even than her email and Netflix. It wasn’t stalking, she kept telling herself. Could she help it if Ann-Marie was so clueless as to leave her page unprotected by privacy settings? It was as if she wanted the world to see her smug, happy life, as if she positively welcomed onlookers to inspect the glorious honour of being lucky Ann-Marie Chandler. Come in, roll up, take a look, try your hardest not to envy me! Tricky, huh! Shucks.
Beautiful, wholesome Ann-Marie was thirty-seven, which meant she was actually two years older than Rosa – although annoyingly, she looked younger, happier and way more photogenic. Maybe that was what having a wonderful life did for you: it magically airbrushed away those pesky worry lines and eyebags, ensured those hands remained soft and pretty, as if they’d never washed a dish or peeled a potato in their blessed life. Perhaps your body simply aged differently when you lived in a picture-perfect Cotswold village with a massive garden and your own Land Rover Discovery, and you had two blonde beaming children, Josh and Mae (also known as ‘my little man’ and ‘my little princess’). Yeah, it must be great, living in a real-life Boden catalogue; all those coffee mornings with friends, and their picturesque children, and the rolling green countryside, and . . .
Jesus, stop it, Rosa, she thought, suddenly sickened by her own bitterness. Spying on Ann-Marie sometimes seemed counter-productive, more agony than it was worth. With every click on the woman’s timeline, it was as if her insides were curdling, her sanity shrivelling – and for what? Ten minutes of juicy sneering? A new shot of rage to fuel the inner furnace? Somehow Rosa had turned into the horrible, vindictive sort of person who found herself hoping that Ann-Marie would choke to death on one of her home-baked cookies (Hashtag-yummy!), or that precious Josh and cutesy Mae would be found face-down in that idyllic stream that pranced along at the bottom of the Chandlers’ garden. No, she didn’t hope that, she reprimanded herself severely. Of course she didn’t. She wasn’t a total psychopath. Not yet, anyway.
So how were things in Ann-Marie world this week? Oh, sweet, she had taken Mae to a teddy bears’ picnic. Bless. Photos, of course, of Mae in a cute pink sundress and matching cardigan (designer, no doubt) and sparkly trainers that almost certainly cost as much as Rosa’s own Nike Airs. Hashtag-sucker, thought Rosa, nose wrinkling as she scrolled down.
Look, there was precocious Joshie, Ann-Marie’s ‘little man’ aged seven, in hideous prep school uniform with a cap as well, for goodness’ sake. Only the best for Ann-Marie’s family though, eh? He’d be running the country in thirty years, just wait, she thought, reading on.
Ahh. Wasn’t that nice? A romantic weekend away planned for Ann-Marie and her husband David! Handsome, square-jawed David, or ‘hubby’ as she termed him. Well, how lovely. Lucky Ann-Marie! Rosa hoped she and David wouldn’t accidentally suffer terrible food poisoning from their room service dinner. Shame they weren’t coming to the Zanzibar really, wasn’t it? Wouldn’t that have been a coincidence!
Rosa was startled from her nasty little dreams just then by a knock on the door and she shut the laptop hurriedly. Her heart was actually pounding, she realized, putting up a hand to her chest, and feeling it thumping there. Steady on, love. It’s only a stupid Facebook page. How ironic would it be, after all her nasty secret murderous thoughts, if it was her who ended up dropping dead of a heart attack, killed by her own dastardly body?
‘Coming,’ she called. Goodness, yes, that would be Bea, Jo’s daughter, and she needed to pull herself together and deal with this new drama. ‘Hi,’ she said apprehensively, as she opened the door. ‘Bea, isn’t it? I’m Rosa.’
‘I got your note,’ the girl said, chin wobbling as Rosa let her in. Her fox-coloured hair looked wilder and tanglier than ever, falling over one eye, and she had on chipped mauve nail varnish and about twenty badges pinned to the lapels of her school blazer. Normal People Frighten Me, said one. Zombie Outbreak Response Team, said another. ‘What’s going on? What do you mean, Mum’s in hospital? What happened, was it her asthma, or . . . ?’
‘She . . . to be honest, I don’t really know,’ Rosa replied wretchedly, realizing far too late that she should have phoned the hospital by now in order to have gleaned some proper information for the girl; hard facts in answer to the questions Bea was always going to ask. Instead she’d been too busy sneering over another woman’s life to actually deal with a real-world situation. She was a terrible person, basically. ‘I got here just as the paramedics were taking her away, it was all a bit of a rush. She asked me to look after you, so . . .’
‘What, and you didn’t even bother to find out why she was ill? What had happened? Fucksake!’ Bea cried, staring angrily at her, that foxy mane practically bristling with indignation.
‘I’m sorry,’ Rosa said with a stab of guilt. Having been in her solitary bubble for so long, she felt out of practice when it came to social situations and had absolutely no idea how to speak to this belligerent girl-woman, she thought, biting her lip. It was like having a wild animal on her doorstep, glaring and unpredictable. ‘Look, come in a minute. Let me ring the hospital right now and find out. I’ll see if we can go and visit her.’
Bea deflated a little as Rosa went to retrieve her phone. ‘’Kay,’ she mumbled, gnawing at one of her mauve nails.
Three minutes later, Rosa had spoken to a sister on a ward at the hospital and been told that Jo was now apparently ‘comfortable’ but would definitely be staying in overnight. They were welcome to go and see her, and visiting hours went on until eight that evening.
‘Right,’ said Bea at once, turning as if to leave. ‘I’ll be off then.’
‘Oh, but—’ Rosa began, taken aback as the girl hoisted up her enormous bag of school books and started walking away. There was something about the set of her shoulders – high and hunched, radiating tension – that made her seem vulnerable all of a sudden, more little girl than teenager. I don’t need anyone! Except of course she did.
Rosa thought of the two pale yellow sponge discs that would be cool by now, the bag of icing sugar ready on the side. But she’d told Jo she’d take care of this girl, and so the cake would have to wait. ‘I’ll give you a lift,’ she said, grabbing her car keys and hurrying after her.
Jo was up in one of the wards, at the end of a long echoing corridor. Appendicitis, a nurse told them as they arrived in the reception area, with surgery needed urgently. That didn’t sound good, Rosa thought to herself, trying to remember back to biology lessons at school. She wasn’t even completely sure where the appendix was but knew that burst ones could cause a lot of pain. Surgery too, poor Jo. How long would it take a person to recover from that anyway? she wondered, casting a doubtful eye at the glowering Bea. Looking after someone else’s kid you didn’t know for a few hours was one thing, but overnight – and possibly longer still – was something different altogether. She had a feeling it would take more than a slice of Victoria sponge to win over this particular home guest.
‘Can we see her?’ Bea was saying, squaring up to the nurse, voice hostile, as if prepared to argue, very hard, that she had to see her mum.
‘Of course you can,’ the nurse said, not reacting to the combative posture of the girl. The nurse was younger than Rosa, with brown curly hair and a generous sprinkling of freckles. ‘We’ve had to give her some fairly strong painkillers, so she might be groggy, but we’re keeping her comfortable until she can go into theatre. Follow me.’
Jo was asleep when they edged around the curtain, her complexion greenish white, her crimson hair startling against the pillow.
‘Mum,’ Bea said quietly, edging towards the bed. ‘Mum?’
Jo stirred and made a mumbling sound in her throat but her eyes remained closed. A tear rolled down Bea’s face and dripped onto the white starched sheets, leaving a wet blotch. ‘Mum, it’s me, wake up,’ she said, her voice tremulous, but still Jo didn’t move.
‘Do you want a tissue? I’ve probably got one in my—’ Rosa said, ferreting around in her bag but Bea merely glared at her again, slumping into a chair nearby.
Rosa hovered awkwardly. Now what? She remembered with a pang her plans for today’s free time – treating herself to a coffee at one of the pavement cafés, mooching about the shops in the sunshine with the luxury of nothing to do. By moving to Brighton she’d deliberately cut herself off socially and that was how she wanted it, being on her own, with only herself to have to think about. Meanwhile, here she was on this ward, the smell of sanitizing hand-gel stinging her nostrils, the sound of someone crying softly in the next bed along – plus there was Bea, this girl for whom she’d unexpectedly become responsible. Cast out of her comfort zone, Rosa didn’t have a clue what to do next. Come on, she reminded herself. You’re the adult here. Take control.
‘Should I leave you two together for a bit?’ she asked after a few moments had passed.
‘What, so we can have a private conversation? Er . . . not sure that’s exactly gonna happen right now,’ Bea said caustically, gesturing at the motionless form of her mother.
Rosa felt herself flush. Look, I don’t have to be here, kid, she felt like retorting. This was my afternoon off, thanks, and I’ve got things I’d much rather be doing than hanging around a hospital, chaperoning you and your sarcasm.
But just then, as if to be contrary, Jo did crack one eye open and murmur, ‘Bea?’ and Bea was up and leaning over her in the next second. ‘Mum?’
Rosa took that as a sign to give them both some privacy. ‘I’ll wait outside,’ she said, slipping out through the curtain.
Jo had not really come round, save for that brief moment of consciousness, and so after twenty minutes or so, Bea admitted defeat, and shuffled out to find Rosa. ‘Should I call your grandparents, do you think, or your dad?’ Rosa asked as they made their way back through the warren of corridors and out towards the car park. Admittedly, Jo had asked her to look after the girl but that was due to simple timing alone, Rosa’s appearance on the scene just as Jo was being taken away. There had to be someone better equipped to deal with Bea, surely. Someone, moreover, that Bea would rather be with too. And, without wanting to sound uncharitable, the sooner Rosa could return to her solitary, fuss-free world, the better, frankly.
Bea’s head whipped round in alarm. ‘Why, do you think she’s going to die or something?’
‘No! I meant, to help out, to look after you,’ Rosa replied. ‘To go and visit her too.’
‘Oh,’ the girl said and shrugged. ‘Well, my dad’s a tosser, his parents are both in New Zealand, and my other grandparents hate us,’ she went on bluntly. ‘So no, basically.’
‘Right,’ said Rosa, chastened. They had reached the car park now and she peered about, trying to remember where she’d parked. ‘What about aunties, then? Other relatives? Friends?’
Bea shoved her hands into her pockets. ‘I just want to go home,’ she muttered. ‘I’ll be fine on my own. I am fourteen.’
‘Well . . . .’ Rosa began weakly, but Bea’s face was so mutinous she found herself trailing off. ‘We’ll talk about it later,’ she fudged in the end, feeling out of her depth. This is what happened when you got involved with other people, she thought glumly, spotting the car at last and heading towards it. Confrontation, difficulty, stress . . . Oh, why hadn’t she walked a longer way home that afternoon, and avoided all of this? Why couldn’t the rest of the world just leave her be?
The atmosphere as they drove back was strained and largely silent. Bea scrubbed her eyes now and then and turned away from Rosa so that she faced the passenger window, in order, Rosa suspected, to try and hide her tears. A sudden shower of rain made the colours outside seem smeary and Rosa switched on her wipers, headlights and the fan heater, one after another, her mind straying to a memory of how much Max loved the rain, thunderstorms in particular; how he was the sort of man who’d throw his head back and laugh if they were ever caught in a downpour, rather than scurry to the nearest café (Rosa’s preference). Headstrong, that was Max. Reckless and impulsive, the type who was all about the big gestures, the passion, the expensive presents. But of course Rosa knew by now that this was just his sleight of hand, a dextrous illusion to distract you from the shallows within.
I thought I saw Max today in the King’s Road, Catherine had said that time, eyebrows lifting in her guileless way. She had been smiling, as if this was great news, as if she was happy for Rosa. Is he back early from Amsterdam? And Rosa hadn’t twigged for a second. I wish! she’d said, grimacing in reply. They’d been in the Pitcher and Piano down the road from work, and were perched on a slouchy leather sofa together, the sort that was just a bit too low to be fully comfortable, sipping gin cocktails and catching up. He’s back tomorrow night, she’d said, twirling her straw around the ice cubes to mix her drink. Can’t wait!
Stupid Rosa. Stupid, trusting Rosa. She braked for the traffic lights now, the windscreen wipers hissing and sliding through the rain, just as Bea banged a clenched fist down on her seat and said, ‘I don’t want to go to my dad’s. I just don’t. You’re not going to make me go, are you? He’s such a prick.’
Rosa, indicating to turn right into the square, said nothing for a moment. She didn’t want to start having to lay down the law with this girl she barely knew, especially as she could see Bea was fragile beneath all the scowling and bravado – but at the same time, as the adult in the situation, it was down to her to make the decisions. ‘What happened with your grandparents?’ she asked, avoiding directly answering the question for now. They hate us, the girl had said on the way to the car but Rosa guessed this was mere teenage melodrama, exaggeration for effect. Surely Bea’s words couldn’t be true?
‘They don’t get on with Mum,’ Bea mumbled, lip curling. ‘First of all because she came out and dumped Dad for a woman, and they’re like really super-religious, the sort who try and convert you all the time and make you pray with them and shit. They call themselves Christians but they don’t like gay people . . . I mean, how does that even work? I thought Christians were all about love and forgiveness, that’s what our RS teacher said.’
‘God,’ Rosa said, without thinking, then pulled a face as she heard her own accidental blasphemy. ‘I mean—’
‘Oh, I don’t care. They’re awful. God can’t possibly think they’re okay when they’re so mean all the time anyway.’ Her fingers clenched and unclenched in her lap as the rain drummed on the roof of the car. ‘The second reason they hate Mum is because we ran off to India, but then I nearly died, and we had to come back, and then they had a massive go at Mum and said she was a bad mother, and not fit to look after me.’
The crack in Bea’s voice belied her vulnerability, however scornful her tone. ‘That sounds kind of harsh,’ Rosa commented warily.
‘Yeah. They’re praying for us though, so that’s all right.’ Bea pulled a ferocious face. ‘And they send us things now and then, like a cushion cover that Granny made with “Repent and you will be saved” embroidered on it.’
‘Jesus Christ,’ said Rosa, accidentally blaspheming again. She reversed into a space, pulled on the handbrake and said, deadpan, ‘Well, they sound delightful. Are you sure you don’t want to go and stay with them?’
‘No, I d—’ Bea began to snap, right up until she realized that Rosa was joking. ‘Oh, ha ha,’ she said, rolling her eyes. Was it Rosa’s imagination or did she seem a fraction less angry?
‘Well, in that case, I guess you’ll be staying with me tonight,’ Rosa said, trying to suppress her sigh. The thought of having another person in her flat made her feel uncomfortable but she couldn’t see any other way around it. ‘Let’s go in.’ She switched off the engine, doing her best to sound upbeat. ‘I baked a cake, by the way. Do you like cake?’
Bea shrugged as if she couldn’t care less about cake and got out of the car. ‘S’pose so,’ she muttered, but then relented. ‘Yeah,’ she admitted, lifting her gaze and giving a tiny nod. ‘Actually I do.’